The Republican 5 have demanded a broad rollback of protections in California’s Environmental Quality Act as part of negotiations over a $12.5 billion tax extension.    Passed in 1970, CEQA has been used in lawsuits by environmental and community groups over water use, air quality, environmental justice, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions.  

One of the biggest beneficiaries of a CEQA rollback would be Chevron, formerly Standard Oil of California.  Chevron owns many oilfields throughout the state, and has been seeking to expand the company’s Richmond refinery to allow processing of heavier, dirtier crude oil, yielded by increasingly depleted oil fields.

The refinery expansion was halted in 2009 after a coalition of community and environmental justice groups used CEQA to successfully sue over public health impacts.  In 2010, Chevron lost the appeal.    

In a precedent-setting decision, the court also found that Chevron needed to provide specific mitigation not only for air quality impacts, but for a projected increase in greenhouse gas emissions.  Chevron’s refinery is the single largest point source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state.   The EIR indicated that the expansion could generate almost 900,000 tons of additional greenhouse gases.    

Since losing the appeal, Chevron has sought a special legislative exemption from CEQA for the refinery.   An attempt in August 2010 failed.  Senator Anthony Cannella’s CEQA rollback bill, leaked to the LA Times, has a special exemption for greenhouse gas emissions under CEQA, which would apply to the refinery.  

In 2010, Chevron donated almost a million dollars to an independent expenditure campaign that ran ads in Senator Canella’s and Senator Blakeslee’s district, helping both candidates win in swing state Senate races.

As long as we are looking at streamlining our state government and blowing up the boxes in Sacramento, I think we should take a serious look at the office of the Governor.

For the last six years, the Governor has been unable to propose a balanced budget.  Since he took office and reversed Gray Davis’s Vehicle License Fee increase,  Schwarzenegger has used every possible trick to paper over the state’s ever increasing deficit.  

From issuing $15 billion in “deficit reduction” bonds, to borrowing $9 billion from the schools, Schwarzenegger has systematically pushed through budgets through that have raided every possible funding source, while also pushing initiatives that have systematically tied the state budget up in constitutional knots, making us unable to respond to the current crisis.

If there is any single who is responsible for the near-bankruptcy of our state, it is the Governor.    

So I think the Legislature should take a serious look at the hundreds of millions of dollars we have spent on the Governor’s office.   Are these crazy schemes really worth the money we have been spending?   Or would we be better off with a part-time Governor, and a much smaller Gubernatorial staff?  

As the Tahoe fire kicks off an extremely dangerous fire season, the Governor’s budget-cutting has left the state’s fire departments woefully short on recommended equipment and staff.

  On May 20, 2007, the Los Angeles Times ran an article, Fire danger acute as ’03 lessons fade, detailing the failure of the state to act on recommendations stemming from the worst wildfires in the state’s history.

The article lays out many recommendations by Schwarzenegger’s Blue Ribbon Fire Commission that have not been funded.  Many of them are mission critical.

Here are some of the recommendations:

•  Engines: The state remains far short of the 150 additional engines recommended to supplement the governor’s Office of Emergency Services fleet of 110. The first of 19 new engines will be delivered by July. Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman said getting more trucks is crucial to avoid a repeat of 2003, when departments had firefighters available but not enough trucks to get them to the front lines. “We had run out of vehicles,” he said.

•  Helicopter fleet. The commission found that the state’s aging fire helicopters needed to be replaced. But no new choppers have been purchased. “The fleet itself is excess aircraft built in the ’60s,” said Mike Padilla, chief of aviation with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “They are still doing the job … [but] they’re getting older.”

•  Communications: In 2003, firefighters and law enforcement officers used different radio frequencies, so information didn’t always get passed along. In San Diego’s Cedar fire, radio lines broke down because of volume, leaving firefighters vulnerable. These problems remain. “It’s hard to get everyone on a system or off a system,” said Kim Zagaris, fire chief for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “It’s not cheap.”

•  Staffing: The commission recommended that all state fire engines sent to major wildfires have at least four firefighters. Instead, the state puts four firefighters on fire engines based on fire threat conditions. State firetrucks in high-risk fire zones have four-person crews, but crews elsewhere that would come in as reinforcements might have only three, Jones said. “It’s much more productive to have four persons on an engine than three” to hold fire lines and carve fire breaks, he said.

The Democratic legislature did fund these recommendations — passing five bills that would have put “tens of millions of dollars” towards new equipment and increased staff.  Schwarzenegger vetoed four of them.  The governor did sign a fifth bill requiring that local governments draft safety plans and submit them to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

But it doesn’t take effect until 2010.

(Good introduction to one of the most significant issues on the Tuesday ballot. – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

In Monterey County, a special election on June 5 will shape the future of California’s Central Coast.

This year, the developer-friendly Monterey County Board of Supervisors approved a general plan that would allow 100,000 new housing units to be built over the next 25 years.  The plan would open 4,900 acres of farmland to development, and allow large new subdivisions in rural areas.

Open-space advocates have come up with their own Community General Plan that would channel development into existing cities such as Salinas, Seaside, and Monterey, and into five community areas: Pajaro, Castroville, Boronda, Chualar, and Fort Ord.  It would also require permanent water supplies to be identified before houses are built.  This spring, activists gathered 16,000 signatures and placed the Community General Plan on the ballot in a special election.

The result has been a huge battle of developers vs. environmentalists and local residents.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised and spent on both sides.  The Los Angeles Board of Realtors just sent $150,000 to defeat the initiative.  The Monterey County Republicans have also been active, spending $50,000 on a voter registration drive, likely targeted at Latinos.

The election will be on June 5, and is expected to be extremely close. 

The Yes on A (Community / open-space plan) folks are doing GOTV phonebanking this weekend through Tuesday, June 5 and could use some help.

The campaign office hours are Sunday 1-8pm, Monday & Tuesday, 10am-8pm.   For more information, call the field office in Salinas at 831-758-2509 or Carmel at 831-274-2646.